This is my last article for the month here and as you may know, I have used this entire month to help you and teach you about alternative ways you can increase traffic to your blog, website, or landing page that promotes various affiliate products and services. In the past few weeks I have talked a lot about commenting on other blogs. I would recommend that you read my article about how commenting can help increase traffic and how being the first to comment is important before you read this article here. This article will show you why it is important to comment on blog posts that have never received any prior comments.

In the past few weeks I have explained to you about commenting on other blogs and how doing so can greatly impact and increase traffic to your own blog, web site or landing page. The reasons behind this is because other bloggers who visit the blog posts you have commented on will click the links to check you out and see what you’re all about. Commenting on blog posts are so important to the point where I even recommend that you place a focus on being the first person to comment on a newly published blog article.

Within commenting, I also explained the importance of making excellent first impressions when you do leave comments. Commenting on other blog posts gives you the free opportunity to sell yourself to thousands of other people. It gives you the opportunity to plant seeds of interest and to lure these people towards clicking over to view your site. When you do leave comments on other blogs, your comments should be of high quality and they should be well written. Always keep in mind that your comments and interactions with other bloggers are a direct reflection on the perception that these people have of you.

With that said, often I gun for articles that have never received prior comments. The reason I do this is because people often assume that a blog post without comments is a blog post without traffic. And that is far from the truth! Most all blog posts over time receive around a few thousand visits each year. And commonly this traffic come direct from search engines. Search engine traffic is excellent because it is targeted traffic. In the past I explained the importance of commenting on blog articles that have relevance to the products and services you sell. And by commenting on these articles you in return will pick up residual traffic from the traffic being received direct from the search engines on these articles.

Having that said, if you find articles that have no prior comments, then you have no competition created by other people who have commented. Another element of importance here is the fact that most bloggers are very natural people and don’t consider their blogs to be sources of income. Meaning when they write their content it isn’t written in a way to generate a call to action. Being the first person to comment on these type of articles — especially ones without prior comments — gives you the golden opportunity to take a balanced and authoritive roll towards creating your own call to action within the comment itself.

Often when search engine traffic read the article and make it to the bottom of the post, they are left with nothing else to do. And when your comment is in their view, they will naturally read what you write. If your comment is written in a way that plants a seed and creates interest, these people will want to learn more about you and your own blog or web site. And because you are conscious of your writing and because your writing has been carefully written, your newly recruited readers will be yet another added subscriber into your own network that you are slowly building and increasing in size over time.

The point to remember here is that most bloggers aren’t skilled marketers and they usually leave their readers hanging at the bottom of the article. If you are the first to comment and also the only person to comment you have a golden opportunity to create the call to action that the writing author failed to do. 

Best Regards,
Garry Conn
www.GarryConn.com

You may have noticed recently the increasing popularity of certain social mediums – Facebook, Twitter and MySpace – amongst online marketers. After all it is a great way to attract potential customers to your website who you may not have previously been able to target.

But here is the thing. These tools, though fantastic for your affiliate website, have been used to excess. More importantly they have been used in the wrong way. From overly promoting their websites to overdoing their blogs and link building, some marketers are running the risk of annoying members within these networks with their incessant online marketing strategies.

Now before you say ‘why use them then, if they cause so much hassle?’, let us explain ourselves. You see it is not so much the fact that these social mediums are being overused, but the fact that online marketers are using the wrong types of methods to promote their affiliate treatment within these arenas.

With the right system you can use them. All you need to do is bear in mind the following tips when you explore these social networks and the rest will come naturally.

One: Create a thorough profile page

Many online marketers skim over this area in their determination to promote their website/blog, but this is a huge mistake. By taking the time to set up a profile page that lists all your interests, your areas of expertise, blogs and websites, surfers can get to personally know you as a company.

Plus by making full use of your profile page you can naturally pull surfers towards your product/service. Posting valuable titbits of information onto your profile regularly is 1 sure way to attract consistent traffic. The key here is to think outside the box and to make sure you post comments about other sites within your profile. Do that and you can provoke discussion. The only point to bear in mind here is to be careful to not turn your posts into a blog article. Instead present it as a topical post.

Two: The five P’s

Most marketers will rely on four of these ‘P’s’, but we feel there is five you should consider: price, drug, placement, promotion and participation.

Traditionally participation gets cut off from this list, but in this kind of social medium you need to participate in order to achieve the conversion rates you desire plus keep the momentum of your product growing.

In a social network such as Facebook, when surfers join a community they want to feel a part of something. They want to trust you. For this reason you need to be an equal participant within your profile.

To do this you need to provide your members with regular expert advice, topical informational posts and be there to answer their questions when they have got 1. Similarly you need to throw questions out there yourself. To make posts on controversial topics that are assured to encourage discussion about your chosen affiliate niche. Do that and you will soon have a following.

Three: Become the expert

As we mentioned in the second point, surfers need to believe in the reliability of your pill. They need to have confidence in the fact that your product is the right one for them.

For this reason it is important that you come across as an expert in your niche. The ‘top dog’ so to speak. And this is easily achievable.

Simply make sure that your profile is filled with fresh and interesting content that proves you are ahead of your competition and that you know what you are talking about.

Try for example subscribing to high quality blogs. Posts here could provide you with pivotal information that you in turn can reiterate back into your own profile.

Four: Be genuine

As with all online mediums – blogs, websites and social networks alike – if you lie or try to take on a false persona surfers will be able to tell. And within a social medium such as Facebook and Twitter this is the last thing you want to happen as it will harm your traffic and your credibility.

Instead be genuine and transparent when you speak to surfers. If you make a mistake, apologise. Do not try to be something you are not. Surfers appreciate honesty.

Five: Establish your credibility

It is one thing to say you are an expert in property investment, but it is another matter entirely to prove it. Surfers though want to watch your expertise in action, as only then can they believe you are the real deal.

To accomplish this we recommend that you read up on your niche; stay vigilant to the news and offer regular pieces of news, tips and advice within your profile. Offering for example free eBooks within your profile and blog posts will encourage trust as surfers will know that they will be able to access this information with no strings attached.

Hello and welcome to another SEO Roundup.

It’s a great week for SEO this week and we have posts from David Harry on Future Proofing your SEO, a great post from Will Critchlow on Nofollow and macro blogging, more reasons to target long tailed keywords from Aaron Wall and 12 great video sites for link building from Ann Smarty.

How did you all get on with last weeks post? Add all my recommendations to Twitter? There was some really good discussion going on this week so you’ve missed out if not.

Obviously SES London is all wrapped up and sorted now and if you, like me, were unlucky enough not to attend this year then Search Engine World put together a pretty awesome summary, it features the top ten stories to come out of it as well as a few videos/interviews. Definitely worth a read.

———-

My first official link out is to HuoMah and specifically David’s post on Future Proofing your SEO. Understanding changes in the market has always been important in this industry, it’s the main reason I do these SEO Roundups for you and this post is a great summarisation of everything you should have learnt over the past six months as an SEO.

Pay close attention to this post and if your still using any of the tactics on a regular basis that David mentions in his safety element section you may want to start modifying your strategies.

All the points mentioned are worth taking on board and I strongly agree with 2 major factors of this post;

one) Security will become part of SEO; since hacking is becoming more and more of a problem and an easy way to mess your SERPs up, preventing hackers hitting your site is more important to us than ever, this is backed up with the latest GWT blog post.

two) Read research papers from IR community; Hard to do and sometimes way over any of our heads but these guys are the future of search engines so knowing what they are developing know tells us what Google may implement next year.

HuoMah is also producing a new SEO learning community, I will update you guys if/when I have chance to look at it.

———-

Next up is a great post from Will Critchlow on macro-blogging and the nofollow tag, it’s basically his theory on how certain aspects of SEO will change as Twitter and similar apps take over the blogsphere.

Very interesting stuff and I certainly agree that there is more to nofollow than meets the eye and I have seen a lot of sites with a few poor links and a handful of nofollow beat sites with great SEO out of the SERPs.

What do you guys think to Will’s theory and do you think it already more than that? I think it already is affecting search results and it will continue to be a factor so start thinking more about what and where a link is from not just whether it is or is not nofollow and the PR of a page.

———-

Next up is an easy to follow but informative post from SEOBook on longtail keywords. We all know longtail search has value, for the affiliate market it’s a pretty sure thing but what’s great about this post is that it looks into the why.

You do need to know this kind of information so check Aaron’s post out and follow the advice, there is no reason you can’t have short tailed keywords as part of your strategy but make it a long term goal and go for some short term wins when launching a new campaign or site.

If you can only take 1 thing absent from this post make it this, targeting a selection of longtail keywords inside an industry builds trust with Google for those terms which in turn makes achieving short tail results a whole lot easier. It also looks like natural growth, no site ranks for “casino” straight absent and Google makes sure of this.

[UPDATE] Check out this data from the latest Hitwise report, just incase you needed more convincing.

———-

Last but not least is a great blog post from Ann Smarty on SEJ listing some recommended video distribution sites.

If you are a fan of talking about it all of them are dofollow but as I mentioned earlier I think the future of SEO will largely discount this.

In the short term though they are great ways to increase links to your site and circulate video content and I’m sure you can all think of some great ways to utilize that!

———-

Thanks for reading SEO Roundup, remember if you have any questions, want to suggest a site or want to know more just leave a comment or drop me an email on craig[@]moreniche.com and I will see what I can do!